


feels like home.

by hinatella



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: AU of AUs, Alternate Universe, Developing Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, Light Angst, M/M, Relationship Firsts, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, a compilation of AUs, a light garnishing of purple pose, it's not as wild as these tags suggest i swear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-30
Updated: 2017-05-30
Packaged: 2018-11-06 23:47:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11046861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hinatella/pseuds/hinatella
Summary: Yuuri loves him across several timelines.





	feels like home.

_first meeting_

The meeting begins, like any other stereotypical meeting, with a crash. A bang. An audible echo that reverberates in Yuuri’s skin and leaves him shaken when he looks up from his styrofoam coffee cup on this quiet mid-morning day. He glances up, and there is Victor Nikiforov, rubbing a reddening spot on his wider-than-life forehead whilst glaring at a street lamp pole with the most comically affronted expression Yuuri has ever seen.

He doesn’t mean to, really he doesn’t. But Yuuri can’t help it when the giggles trickle in a hiccuping stream from his lips. He clutches tight to his cardboard cup sleeve, clutches tighter around his torso, and lets the laughter  _spill_  like a waterfall that won’t stop.

Victor Nikiforov is probably looking at him right now, and god, Yuuri should be shaking with the hurricane force of his stare but he can’t stop laughing. Because reserved, high and mighty, campus-famous Victor Nikiforov ran into a pole while making his way through the quad. How funny is that? How lucky is he to witness something so rare?

He laughs, and he laughs, and he  _laughs_ , and he—

_Bang._

Right into the same pole.

Yuuri immediately stops laughing. He groans, rubs the pulsing sting of his nose— _oh, he hopes he didn’t break something_ —and pauses when he hears the most peculiar sound.

It’s like a drizzle. The sound of water against window panes. Waves crashing against an ocean’s shore. When Yuuri turns his head, hand held fearfully against his nose, he sees it. Victor Nikiforov is laughing too.

Yuuri’s face  _burns_ , fire against his nose and cheeks.

“You dropped your coffee,” Victor Nikiforov says, with an easy smile that tugs at his pretty face and subsequently tugs at Yuuri’s heart in a way that makes him breathless beyond words. He doesn’t know what to say.

Instead of words, he looks down, sees his fallen coffee cup forlornly splattered to the concrete sidewalk below. Oh.

“Want another?” he says. “My treat.”

 _Oh_.

“Y—” He clears the desert aridness of his throat and lets a shaky breath pass his lips. His lips. They’re so dry. “Yes.”

✂

_first date_

“You built this?!” Victor has to shout above the rambunctious racket of the workshop.

Yuuri hops down from an aluminum ladder and wipes the grease from his face with a rag. He beams, bright like the sun and as wide as the sky. Blood, sweat, tears,  _bones_  were worked into this thing, in the form of nicks through his thin skin and rivulets against his pudgy cheeks. He regards the big, mechanical thing with wonder, with all of the soaring happiness he wouldn’t trade for the world.

Then he turns to Victor.

And. Well.

The feeling he gets when he stares at Victor’s lovely smile drives a hard bargain.

“Mhm,” Yuuri replies, low and timid, with a shy dip of his head.

“This...this is amazing, Yuuri,” Victor lays a hand against the metal surface. Yuuri swears it hums and purrs with the gentle action. Victor turns that reverent smile from the fruit of Yuuri’s labor to Yuuri himself, and Yuuri goes weak at the knees. “You’re amazing.”

“N—No, it’s...it’s nothing, really, it’s just. It wasn’t a big deal,” Yuuri lies. But Victor doesn’t have to know that, know how many medical white bandages he went through. How many stores he had to scour through for that one obscure part. How many nights he stayed behind in his workshop, working, getting lost in it, until the glow of the sunlight tells him that it’s dawn.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Yuuri. I don’t know a thing about building mechanical contraptions like this, but I, in the very least, know that  _this_ ,” Victor taps a knuckle against it, and it echoes in response, “was no easy feat.”

Yuuri can do nothing but sheepishly rub his hands together. They’re still a little slippery from the oil.  _Ugh._

“It flies, you know,” Yuuri says casually, as though he were discussing the smoggy weather. He takes a sip of his coffee sitting on a workbench and peers at Victor over the rim.

Victor  _gasps_. Yuuri sees his silver locks getting swept up with it. “Let’s ride it,” he states, eyes serious, like he’s wanted nothing more badly in his life.

“I haven’t tested it yet, it could be dangerous—”

“So let’s test it now! The two of us! What better first date than to ride a mechanical dragon built by the careful hands of my boyfriend.”

Yuuri stops breathing. His brain short-circuits.  _Boyfriend?!_

“Come, come,” Victor urges, grabbing Yuuri’s hand with his big, warm one, and it does nothing to quell the internal screaming going on in his head. Frankly, it only makes it worse.

The screaming repeats like a mantra.

_Boyfriend...boyfriend...boyfriend…!_

Yuuri is pulled from his Victor-induced trance when he feels a tug at his hand. He stares at Victor’s brilliant blue eyes. They’re an enigma. Cool like ice, but they burn right through his parchment fiber skin.

“Yuuri? How about it?”

Yuuri thinks on it, purses his lips, and squints his eyes through his circle-rimmed glasses. He doesn’t think long, though, not when Victor gives him that lip-quivering, heart-tugging, mind-numbing look. The man has so much power, could play Yuuri like a fiddle, bring him to his knees. But he’s  _so_  gentle. Another enigma.

(Yuuri could write a book of them.)

“Okay,” he says.

They grab helmets from a cabinet. Yuuri presses a button, and a series of pulleys drag the roof apart like a gaping yawn towards the blue-gray sky. He tentatively takes Victor’s hand.  _Ahh_ , warm. He wants them wrapped tightly around him.

Yuuri climbs on first, then helps Victor up, then sucks in a breath when Victor’s strong arms wrap around his torso like a coil straight out of an oven.

He tugs on the rope attached to the mechanical dragon and holds on tight when he breathlessly asks Victor, “Are you ready?”

And when Victor nods, whispers  _yes_  against his neck like a secret, sends shivers erupting through Yuuri’s skin, Yuuri exhales, breathing life into the machine.

The dragon comes to life.

A roar.

And they’re soaring through the clouds on laughter-golden wings.

✂

_first touch_

Victor is driving him crazy. Mad with words. Syllables that take nothing prisoner, and leave Yuuri a shell of his combusted self.

He knew Victor was an affectionate person from the moment they met, of course he did. Barely a day in and the man took it upon himself to grab at Yuuri’s small hand like Yuuri’s an anchor and Victor is lost at sea with the last of his sanity driven away with each splash of water.

But it’s the same for Yuuri too. That exhilarating lost of sanity. And he’s not sure how to deal with it all. All of his happiness that overflows his basin-shaped heart and leaves him inundated with these feelings.

They manifest in tiny pink flowers at some point. Yuuri tries so hard to keep it in. But his flustered nature doesn’t allow for that. Something as simple as a compliment, and suddenly—

Pop. Right into existence, a pink petal as saturated as the blush on his cheeks glides through the wind.

A brush of hands. A kiss on the nose. The lacing of their fingers.

There’s so many flowers sometimes, Yuuri swears he’ll drown in them.

He wonders if Victor notices them too. He wonders if the other can see them, if he’s doing this on purpose, just to get that high rising tide of emotions to cause an avalanche of flowers to crowd at Yuuri’s feet.

Victor hugs him tight once, tells him, “You smell like flower petals,” and Yuuri’s flowers run free with abandon, and Victor embraces him tighter.

✂

_first kiss_

The doorbell rings.

Yuuri huffs. He’s elbow deep in a pot of potion, kneading the thick liquid until all of the lumps are gone. Of all times for him to show up…

With a sigh, Yuuri slides his hands out of the pot and grimaces a little when some of the chunky liquid splatters onto the floor.

Yuuri wipes it all off, washes his hands in the sink, then wipes his hands again as he stalks over to the front door of his apartment.

He opens it, and there stands Victor with a bouquet of pink roses and an apologetic countenance. He offers a small, soft sheepish smile. “Hi there.”

“You’re late,” Yuuri grouses, a cute little moue shaping his pink lips.

“I know, I know! I’m very sorry, Yuuri. There was a commotion at work that held me back. The prince of another realm was requesting my services, and I couldn’t say no.” Victor steps close, plucks a flower from its neat bouquet home, and slips it into the crevice of Yuuri’s ear; Yuuri shivers. “I should’ve called.”

Yuuri wants to be mad, wants to pretend that the sheer proximity of Victor doesn’t make him momentarily forget all of his worries, but he cracks like a flimsy eggshell. His shoulders sigh away the tension in them when Victor presses a kiss to his forehead. It’s like magic. Yuuri supposes that it is.

“It’s okay. I’m not mad or anything,” he reassures. He collects the bouquet from Victor’s hand and takes a rose, then mimics Victor’s action and slides one behind an ear, against his pretty silver hair. “You’re such a sap.”

“And  _you_ are devastatingly beautiful.” Victor places more kisses delicately across his eyelids.

Yuuri giggles and uses the bouquets to swat him away, but Victor is having none of that; he wraps his arms taut across Yuuri’s body, traps his offending limbs in place.

“That’s such a lie,” Yuuri protests. “I smell like blood rot and eye of newt. It’s gross.”

“Doesn’t make you any less enthralling,” Victor insists, and he’s continuing with his tirade of kisses again. Sweet and  _merciless_ , each one pulls a bout of bubbly laughter from Yuuri’s lips.

Victor only pauses once to ask, “How is the healing potion coming along?”

“It’s... _ah_...it’s coming,” Yuuri unhelpfully says. He can’t concentrate on anything but how inconceivably soft Victor’s lips are, like flower petals, or cotton, or clouds in a bottle.

“Mmm?”

“The consistency is all wrong....it’s hard to get it all… _Victor_.”

Victor finally,  _finally_ , stops. Yuuri can breathe like a person again. He huffs in exasperation; his face is probably red.

“I need you to help me with it.”

“Of course, darling. That’s why I’m here.”

“Good, then grab an apron and let’s go,” Yuuri says.

Victor doesn’t relinquish him, though. Not yet. He has this look in his eyes like he hasn’t seen Yuuri in weeks, like Yuuri is a treasure, something to be marvelled at and polished and kept on a mantelpiece for passing guests to see and marvel along with him. His eyes flicker downward, then back up again.

“You just have to  _ask,_ ” Yuuri mumbles with all the embarrassment in the world.

“Can I kiss you?” Victor asks.

“Why is that even a question?” he answers.

“You  _literally_  just said—”

Yuuri grips Victor by the lapels of his jacket and kisses him, fully and ardently.

The light of the ceiling fan overheats and fizzles out.

✂

_first argument_

He bursts through the throne room doors, and he can’t see past the unadulterated, unbridled _emotion_ in the form of tears in his eyes. He can’t see, but he spots the hazy figure of Victor pacing the length of the room. Victor, whose hard, worried lines blur at the edges. Yuuri doesn’t know what to feel.

Victor’s head snaps up when he sees Yuuri approach; he has this look of pure _heartbreak_ when he sweeps over Yuuri’s teary-eyed face. Doesn’t speak until Yuuri is close enough to touch, until he can reach out a hand and caress his face and chase the tears away with his lips. _“Yuuri_.” He breathes it into his skin.

Yuuri lets him, but he stands there, unmoving, doesn’t allow himself to get swept into this insurmountable whirlpool just over the horizon. “What were you thinking?” he whispers, wet and helpless, his voice shaking. He doesn’t mean to sound so pathetic, but he can’t bring himself to bring forth all the angry, negative things he’s feeling into five, short syllables.

“I was thinking that I did not want to lose you,” Victor says.

The words should be reassuring, something sweet and validating to lock away for another day, but they only brings forth a slew of fresh tears. “But you—you didn’t even _ask_ how I felt about this—”

“I had no time!” Victor's words are a bite, razor sharp, straight through Yuuri’s resolve. “A final decision had to be made. War waits for _no one_.”

Yuuri’s heart feels cracked, and sullen, and woeful. “You really think that I, of all people, wouldn’t understand that? I’m here for a reason, Victor, you can’t just—” He sucks in a breath, and it’s like fire is lining his airways. “You can’t just send me away without telling me when it’s my _job_ to stay by your side.”

Victor looks crestfallen, like this is hard, like being separated while he’s at the forefront of a calvary and Yuuri is forced to listen to news of apprehension by messenger is _hard_ — “Let me protect you for once, Yuuri.” He gingerly swipes a hand against Yuuri’s cheek, slides it down to his chin, attempts to turn his head up so he can see his reflection in Yuuri’s brown eyes.

But Yuuri is nothing if not obstinate; he doesn’t let him.

“I can protect myself. Who are you to decide that for me?”

Yuuri has never seen a face crack before.

The hairline fractured pieces shatter and puncture a hole in his chest.

He inhales, holds his breath.

“I’m sorry,” Victor says.

“I’m not leaving your side, Victor,” Yuuri says in one exhale, voice shaking, fingers quaking, and he looks right into Victor’s eyes when he continues, “I’m my own person, I make my own choices, and I want to protect you too.”

Yuuri watches Victor press his eyes shut tight like he’s waging all out war with his conscience, and he watches Victor’s defeat in the form of slumped shoulders and long sighs, a squeeze of his hand, a press of their foreheads.

“Okay.”

✂

_first separation_

It’s hard sometimes. Yuuri might even venture to say that it isn’t fair.

Yuuri thinks, no one else in the universe must know how it feels. Two trillion people, and there isn’t _one_ who knows the lovestruck pain of loving Victor Nikiforov so much he could get sick with it, spew the love-obsessed soliloquies onto the ground until he’s punched-out retching.

No one else will know what it’s like to love Victor Nikiforov so fully, and yet be literal light years away from him.

It hurts.

It hurts _it hurts it hurts it hurts it_ —

isn’t fair.

He looks up at the wide, expansive sky, where the rings of the planet cut through the atmosphere, and he wonders if Victor is there, in his line of sight, picking through stars upon stars until he finds the one system in which Yuuri resides.

Yuuri calls him sometimes, when the hurt and the weight and the overbearing _ache_ is too much. He breathes into the HoloCeiver, chokes back sobs when all he can say in response to Victor’s worried-filled coaxing is _I can’t. I can’t I can’t I can’t_. And when they’re video calling, and Victor’s blue-green face regards him through the screen, Yuuri watches his virtual lips mouth around the words _You can, you can, you can_.

Other times, it’s the other way around. Other times, Victor calls him out of the blue, in the dead of night, when the entire galaxy is asleep and the sound of Victor’s sleeplessness is loud enough for the world to hear.

Yuuri asks, _are you okay_? And Victor always, always answers, _yes_ , but it’s a syllable loaded with water. He’s drowning in it. Yuuri knows he’s lying, but he doesn’t question. Victor never really liked crying in front of him. Even through video feeds.

Still, Yuuri says, _it’ll be okay_ , because he knows with full conviction that, if Victor were to travel across this star system right now to climb into Yuuri’s arms, he’d wrap him in words of comfort that soothe the ache too.

✂

_first time_

“I can’t believe we’re lost,” Yuuri says.

“We’re not _lost_ ,” Victor answers. He pulls the car onto the side of an empty road, turns the key in the ignition, and kills the engine. “We’re just...blindly exploring.”

“We’re lost,” Yuuri repeats.

“We have GPS, it’s fine,” Victor reassures. He turns the car on again to pull the the roof down, because leave it to Victor Extraneous Nikiforov to use a convertible for a road trip. Yuuri had suggested his beat up old truck made of love-dents and angry-scrapes, but Victor didn’t want to hear it. _We ride in style_ , he’d said. But this just feels impractical.

Still, Yuuri supposes that this is nice. He pulls down his car seat, and months of stress go down with it, and he looks up at all of the stars dotting the sky, wonders at the constellations trapped up there and wonders which one is Ursa Major, which one is The Queen, which one Victor likes the most.

(Victor tells him it’s the one that looks like a dog.)

(Yuuri doesn’t see it.)

Yuuri feels full that night. Of the stars that come in specks on the dark canvas of the sky, of the fluttering in his chest when Victor brushes his warm hands on his too-cold skin, of rising water that fills his insides and leaves him pliant with its fluidity.

Victor rolls over, and Yuuri caves without a thought.

Yuuri can’t stop giggling the whole time, not when the cold night air brushes gentle fingers against his heated skin, not when Victor covers anything he can reach with kiss after kiss after sweet and sultry kiss.

Not when the laughter is mixed in with soft sighs that dare escape his lips without his permission.

But Yuuri lets it happen, lets himself let go and get swept up in Victor’s whirlpool love that he has no chance of escaping from (not that he wants to). Victor is a relentless thing when he engulfs Yuuri like he is a ship and Victor is a typhoon out in the middle of the sea.

When Victor says it, he _moans_ it, spears it directly into his ears, streamlined straight for his heart, and Yuuri bursts at the seams.

Later, when they’re catching their breaths, heady with stars and open road air, Yuuri remembers himself, remembers what Victor says and speaks it right back, against his love-bitten neck.

_“Love you too.”_

✂

_first scare_

_Fuck_ , is the only thing Yuuri’s mind can supply for him and it’s the only thing he _feels_ ; it’s a spiraling thought that Yuuri can’t take hold of. His brain is on autopilot as he moves through the corridors. There’s so many of them, and he hasn’t got a clue where he’s going, but he needs to _move_.

He’s stopped trying to call into the microphone planted on his person because all that greets him is static. Dreadful, _awful_ white noise. Yuuri doesn’t think he’s ever hated the sound so much in his life.

Up ahead is a stairwell; Yuuri takes them two-three-four at a time, practically flies up the whole thing like his life depends on it. But that’s not right, Yuuri thinks, the words a bitter, ugly thing.

 _His_ life doesn’t depend on it.

Yuuri bursts through a set of doors at the top floor before he even has his knife in hand—moves like lightning across the room and doesn’t think twice about the bodies that fall like marionette puppets to the floor—

And he stops. Falls to his knees. Peers tearily at the glassy blue eyes that belong to Victor, who’s propped up against a wall, an art piece. Devastatingly beautiful. Painted red.

Victor blinks, slow and languid, and Yuuri shuffles close.

“Victor?” His voice is thick, his words are shaky. He’s trying so hard to keep it together, conjure months and months of stone-cold training, but it’s all slipping between his fingers. Yuuri moves even closer, until he’s near enough to wipe away the blood on Victor’s cheek that he dearly hopes isn’t his. “Victor…”

“ _Yuuri_ ,” Victor wheezes, raspy and sick.

Yuuri needs to hold it together, but he wants to _cry_.

“You’ll be okay, yeah? You’ll be okay. Backup is on the way, and everything will be okay,” he’s babbling as he curls careful hands around Victor’s pallid face, and he doesn’t dare jostle him or look down at the bloody wound Victor is desperately pressing a hand against.

“You’ll be okay, and we’ll get out of here,” he wants to cry, “and we’ll move in together with two dogs in an ocean-side home like we planned,” he wipes the string of tears leaking onto Victor’s face, “and we’ll count the stars every night and tell each other sappy things like how the number of stars in the sky doesn’t compare to how big my love for you is.” Yuuri isn’t sure what he’s saying right now, but he knows it’s just as much for his benefit as it is for Victor’s—an anchor to hold fast to, to keep his waning gaze at bay.

Victor groans when he lifts a hand to touch Yuuri’s wet cheeks, _oh_ , he hadn’t realized he was crying too. “I’ll be okay,” he mimics, feeble smile on his lips, and Yuuri so badly wants to believe that, “I’ll be okay.”

Yuuri grips his face tight, doesn’t wanna let go. “Don’t you dare die on me now, Victor, or I swear to god I’ll kick your ass in the next life.”

It’s amazing how Victor still has it in him to laugh. Though, Yuuri can hardly call it one. “I can’t die now,” he pauses and swipes a finger along the edges of Yuuri’s face, then sighs into the air, “I haven’t even proposed to you yet.”

And Yuuri _breaks_.

✂

_first home_

“ _Yuuuu_ ri!” Victor chirps, floating on air, as he closes the book Yuuri is pouring over. “Come, come, dance with me!”

“Vit—hey, wait, _no_ —Victor!”

His protests fall on deaf, happy-tinted ears. Victor doesn’t have a care in the world, and of course he doesn’t. He graduated. Yuuri has finals _and_ a thesis to finish. God, he wishes it would write itself; he wishes he had magic.

Yuuri humors him though, because it’s one in the morning, and his eyes are burning, and his mind is nebulous with the lack of rest piling on sleep debt in his tired limbs.

“There’s no music,” Yuuri murmurs tiredly into Victor’s shoulder as they twirl around the living room of their apartment. Five minutes in, and Yuuri finally registers that the only sound filling the room are the _thumps_ of their feet on the carpet and the _bumps_ of their legs against the coffee table.

Victor hums. “We don’t need music. Our heartbeats are enough.”

Yuuri blinks. A beat. “That makes no sense.”

“Shhh.” Victor somehow maneuvers them around their two sleeping poodles and into the bedroom without Yuuri noticing, or perhaps Yuuri is so out of it that he just lets it happen, because there’s the press of the mattress against his knees and the small push against his frame and he’s sent tumbling with Victor toppling above him.

_“Oomphf.”_

Yuuri wriggles. His arms are trapped. “Vityaaa, you’re crushing me.”

“Sorryyy,” Victor responds in a sleepy drawl, rolling off of him and proceeding to cling to his side. He’s warm. He’s always so warm. And cozy. Like home.

Victor is home.

Yuuri turns to face him, wraps the full length of his body around Victor, arms and legs and all, like he’s attempting to cover him up with all of his being and keep him from the world, keep him to himself.

Yuuri sighs, happily and sleepily. This feels familiar. This feels like home.

“I love you, Vitya,” Yuuri breathes softly against his neck. And that, too, feels familiar. It’s like deja vu. _Ha_ , of course it is. How many times a day does he say it? How many places on Victor’s skin does he press those three words, like it’s some game where he’ll win a prize if he covers Victor with them?

“I love you too, star,” Victor _siiiighs_ into his ear, and Yuuri laughs at the vibrations that tickle the shell of it.

“Really?” Yuuri asks, like he doesn’t already know the answer. Of course he does. How can he not, when the answer lies heavy like a giant planet’s ring around his finger? Golden. Glistening. Shiny like Victor’s pretty blue eyes. Maybe this is the prize.

“Truly,” Victor says it behind Yuuri’s ear, the area he _knows_ gets Yuuri laughing the hardest sometimes, and moaning the longest others.

And to think, he’s only here now because he’d foolishly spilled his coffee cup after they both ran into a street lamp three years ago. He could laugh at that; he still does.

Yuuri curls himself tight around Victor, Victor squeezes twice as hard, and Yuuri thinks he’s the luckiest person in the universe, because he’s finally home.

✦

**Author's Note:**

> "let's make a short oneshot using that one tumblr post where that person laughs at someone for walking into a pole," i said. "it'll be a simple, short 2k word thing," i said.
> 
> clearly that didn't work out lmao. but i had a fun time writing this regardless!
> 
> thank you to the lovely [emerald1963](http://archiveofourown.org/users/emerald1963/pseuds/emerald1963) for beta reading for me, and catch me on twitter @ [hinatella](https://twitter.com/hinatella). thanks for reading!


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